


Speak No Feeling

by jillothewisp (abbykate)



Series: Hide and Seek [14]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Did I Mention Angst?, Look away if you can't handle angst, M/M, More angst, Pining, Post Reichenbach, Unrequited Love, seriously, sherlock POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-09-18
Packaged: 2017-11-14 13:32:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbykate/pseuds/jillothewisp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You didn't say anything. You never did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speak No Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the next-to-last installment of H&S. The last installment is my responsibility as well, so expect to wait another eternity for it, because I'm really hopeless about writing lately. 9_9

You came back, knowing full well how you needed him, and how _much_ , but no more able to articulate your need than you ever were. So you didn't say, "I tried not to think of you, because if I thought of you I would think of only you, and I couldn't afford to," and you didn't say, "I felt as though half of my body, my actual physical being, had been ripped away, leaving the rest raw and exposed and deformed, without you," and you didn't say, "I _was_ dead, in all the ways that matter." You didn't say anything.

And after a while it was business as usual, with the small exception that you now would watch him sleep at night. It seemed safest; he was a relatively heavy sleeper, you were very quiet. He never had to know you were there. And you could drink him in. Water in the desert. You thought of touching him, how easy it would be to reach out and run your fingertips lightly over his face. Just the barest breath of a touch, but oh, what it would do to you. You never touched him.

He asked you once, only once, if you'd been in his room the night before. You looked at him for long minutes, and then you didn't say, "Yes," and you didn't say, "I'm in your room most nights, just watching you," and you didn't say, "I want to touch you all over, but I would be happy just to brush your cheek with the back of my hand." You didn't say anything.

Then he met the woman. And something about her was different, must have been, because he spent more and more time with her and less and less time with you. You watched his empty bed most nights now, because most nights he wasn't there, wasn't in the flat at all, and you had to come to his room to get any sense of him. And once, because he wasn't there, and would never notice, you dared to curl on your side in his bed. You thought of staying there until he came back. He would see you in his bed and maybe understand everything, maybe, maybe. You didn't stay.

He was happy. He looked happy. You tried not to notice, but you did, you always did. You couldn't not notice. And you would steal looks at him when he was near you, which was less and less often, and you didn't say "It feels like my skin is being slowly, slowly peeled back and replaced with broken glass," and you didn't say, "It feels like I can never get enough air," and you didn't say "Actually, being flayed alive might be preferable to this." You didn't say anything.

Then one day every piece of him had disappeared from the flat, gone into boxes, shipped out systematically. He was leaving. Going to live with the woman, somewhere else, apart from you. You sat on the empty floor of his empty bedroom, running your fingertips lightly over the grain of the floorboards. You thought of a hundred new uses you could find for this room, now it was conveniently vacant. Staring at your hands and imagining you could feel the last of him clinging to the ridges of your fingerprints, you knew you would never change this room. You never did.

By now the sting of it had lessened to a dull, constant ache; you'd been watching him leave for over a year, after all. Still, when he stood in the doorway of the sitting room that last morning, and you felt the finality of it slam into you, like a bullet train, utterly obliterating, you found he was still entirely capable of taking your breath.

He said, "So," and, "That's it, then," and, "I'll keep in touch, yeah?"

You didn't say, "No," and you didn't say, "Listen," and you didn't say, "I love you, I have loved you for a very long time and I will love you for the rest of my life," and you didn't say, "Don't go," and you didn't say, "Please."

You didn't say anything.


End file.
